A) Have seen the most recent episode of Doctor Who (as of its UK airdate!)
B) Want to know about rumors and theories of what's coming up in future episodes
ALSO...
While this blog is not meant to be overtly lewd or pornographic, it is aimed towards adults and may occasionally be inappropriate for children(despite being a blog about what is, ostensibly, a children's show).
One thing I love about the Chibnall era is the focus on historical episodes. There’s this term fans use, “pure historicals,” which describes an episode where the only science fiction element is the TARDIS and otherwise the episode is just about the Doctor and their companions getting swept up in historical events. Now there haven’t really been any pure historicals since all the way back in the 1st Doctor era (although some argue that there’s one in the 5thDoctor era) but the 13th Doctor era has come close a few times, particularly with “Rosa” and especially with “Demons of the Punjab” where the aliens in the episode turned out to be benign and basically inconsequential to the plot. There’s also a focus on historical accuracy that hasn’t been seen perhaps ever in the history of the show. “Rosa” is probably the most historically accurate episode of Doctor Who ever made. “Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror” is not as close to a pure historical as “Rosa” or “Demons of the Punjab,” but there’s a huge emphasis on the real life history of Tesla and educating people about him, harkening back to the show’s original intention of being an educational show for children when the show started in 1963.
That being said, I thought there were a few flaws in the episode, the biggest one being that the strictly non-violent 13thDoctor seems all too eager to blast the Skithra queen with electricity and kill her. Why is blasting her ship with a bolt of electricity any better than shooting her with a gun, Doctor. Also the show has finally reached the point where it’s ripping off itself, because the Skithra were an absolute carbon copy of the Racnoss from “Runaway Bride.” If you’re going to put the Racnoss in an episode, just call them the Racnoss. Or was the idea that they’re such thieves that the Skithra stole their appearance from the Racnoss? If so, that should have been made clearer in the dialogue. And one more nitpicky complaint: the British actor who faked an American accent to play Edison did a pretty good job, except he kept using the British pronunciation of the word “patent” with the long a sound instead of the American pronunciation with the short a.
But complaints aside, it was still a pretty strong episode, especially compared to last week’s disaster, “Orphan 55.” Goran Višnjić, a Croatian-born actor living in America, does an excellent job portraying Tesla, a Serbian-born man living in America. The episode went out of its way to educate people on the forgotten history of Tesla (although I think that he’s making a resurgence in public consciousness anyway. And it’s always fun to see the Doctor get excited about meeting a celebrity. Jodie Whittaker again does a good job or depicting a Doctor who is still recovering from the events of “Skyfall,” as the Doctor seems closer back to her old self but not all the way there yet.
I’m excited for this coming week’s episode, partially for the return of the Judoon, but more so because the BBC has been teasing a bigger reveal than the return of The Master in this week’s episode. I’m really hoping they’re not full of it, but we’ll see. Catch you next time!
Every now and then an episode comes along that’s so god awful that you pretty much have to pretend it never happened. The last time this happened was three seasons ago with the Gatiss-penned disaster that was “Sleep No More,” an episode so bad it comes with a warning at the beginning not to watch it. “Orphan 55” might be irredeemably bad, but it’s at least a half step above “Sleep No More.” In “Orphan 55,” not only does the main plot fail, every single subplot of the episode fails to work as well. First of all the Dregs, who look like the Ood on steroids, are not scary. The twist that the planet is actually Earth both fails to be interesting but it also contradicts established continuity. The episode can’t seem to decide if it’s about global warning or nuclear winter, so it kinda does both and hopes you won’t notice. Then the heavy handed message at the end, which I wholeheartedly agree with by the way, is lacking in any remote semblance of subtlety. The whole episode hits you over the head with a message that it didn’t really think out.
Then there’s the terrible subplots. First there’s the aborted romance between Ryan and Bella which, after every single scene shows Ryan striking out with her, ends with probably the most unearned kiss in the history of Doctor Who.Vilma and Benni’s story could have been really sweet if the episode hadn’t killed them off in such a callous fashion. Nevi and Sylas, two characters that barely have a plot line, seem to fight and make up based on what the script needs, not based on any particular motivations. Similarly, Bella’s plot line about her estranged mother seems completely chaotic with characters’ emotion changes coming from seemingly nowhere.
There was very little that this episode got right. Graham’s giddiness at being on vacation is earnest, endearing, and amusing. Jodie Whittaker does a good job or keeping a cloud over the Doctor’s mood, showing none of her typical joy and light following her discovery about Gallifrey. Other than that, there’s nothing redeemable about this episode, which is surprising considering how good Ed Hime’s last episode, “It Takes You Away,” was. Here’s hoping that “Orphan 55” is the low point of the season and not par for the course, because this was easily the worst episode since “Sleep No More.”
As much as I think it was too soon to bring back the Master this soon, I can’t get over how truly magnificent Sacha Dhawan’s performance is as The Master. He’s possibly the most terrifying and most sinisterly playful Master to date. I really want to see the regeneration from Missy to Sacha Dhawan’s Master, simply because I think Dhawan would absolutely rock that dress.
Now, I brought that up in a Doctor Who Facebook group and several people suggested that Dhawan is playing an earlier version of the Master, perhaps even from the Master’s first set of regenerations back in the classic series, citing his obsession with killing the Doctor as well as his use of tissue compression, both of which are more indicative of early Masters than they are of Missy. Nice theories, but there’s a fatal flaw in them: the Master knows that Gallifrey is in a bubble universe, which places him after “Day of the Doctor,” meaning he has to be at least a later version than John Simm’s Master. It’s possible that this Master is between Simm’s Master and Missy, but I doubt it. I think that this is probably the next Master after Missy, which, as I pointed out last week, means Chibnall is essentially ignoring the redemptive arc that Missy was on. But then again, regeneration can change a lot of things, like when the 12th Doctor became a much angrier man than his predecessor. Others bring up that Missy was supposed to be unable to regenerate after the Master shot her with the full blast of his laser screwdriver, but that’s a ridiculous and petty complaint as the Master has easily escaped much worse fates than that and I can imagine several ways they could have survived. I would have liked an explanation for how the Master survived, but I can understand why the Doctor didn’t ask since the Doctor wasn’t there for Missy’s death.
It’s hard to believe that Doctor Who is a children’s show sometimes, and this is one of those times, as Barton killing his own mother and the Master posing as a Nazi are pretty dark even for the show that suggested once that we might be fully conscious when we get cremated after death. I said I missed the show’s darkness last season, and it was sort of nice to see it return. Still, it was a little frustrating to see Gallifrey gone again after the Doctor (not to mention Steven Moffat) went through so much effort to bring back Gallifrey and the Time Lords. I really hope that we find that some Time Lords survived (and some promotional images from later in the season suggest they have).
And oh yes, the Timeless Child. Finally, a new season-long mystery to unravel and speculate on. Who is the Timeless Child? While it has echoes of “An Unearthly Child,” it doesn’t make sense for Susan to be the stuff of legends around the founding of Gallifrey. Omega would make a bit more sense, as he’s supposed to be the founder of Time Lord society. Could we finally be getting into some Cartmel Madterplan stuff? Probably not, but a girl can dream. But it’s nice to see Chibnall taking a deep dive into the show’s mythology.
Chibnall seems to be doing much less writing than last season, and next week we get an episode from Ed Hime who gave us last season’s brilliant Norwegian string theory mystery, “It Takes You Away,” so I’m looking forward to it. So see ya next time!
The fuck was that? I love The Master more than anyone, but the show needs breaks from its greatest villain. We had three seasons jam packed with Missy, so we needed at least two or three seasons with no Master whatsoever. But nope! We get the Master back again and, after the magnificent gender swap and the incomparable performance of Michelle Gomez, and at a time when the Doctor is finally a woman, the Master has regenerated back into a man. He’s also regressed from the character that The Doctor almost turned good in “The Doctor Falls” and seems to have returned to his old schtick of trying to kill the Doctor. I’ll give them credit for making the Master’s identity a twist at the end, like it always should be, unlike John Simm’s not-so-surprise appearance at the end of “The World Enough and Time” that was spoiled by all the trailers, but this just feels like going back to the well way too soon.
That being said, if the character has to be brought back and downgraded back into a man, Sacha Dhawan is a perfect casting choice. I think some tabloid got ahold of the news that Dhawan was the new Master, but tabloids have been reporting a lot of wacky nonsense lately that has turned out to be horseshit, so I didn’t necessarily believe that. Dhawan goes from innocent and friendly and even flirting with Yaz only to turn on a dime and letting his deliciously sinister side out. His expressions on the plane are absolutely priceless, and were frankly my favorite part of the episode. While I have some problems with the way this Master was handled, I have nothing but praise for the casting choice.
But that’s the problem with this episode: it’s mostly just killing time until we get to a pretty mediocre reveal at the end of the episode. The whole thing was fairly dull, to be honest. The episode plays around with some tropes from the Daniel Craig Bond films, which I have to admit a certain prejudice against. I fell asleep during Skyfall, so when I heard that this episode was going to be “Spyfall” you could color me less than thrilled. And by the time we get to the big cliffhanger, I’m left with more questions than answers, but I really don’t care what the answers to those questions are going to turn out to be in part two. Why are these aliens attacking spies and dumping them in some creepy forest? Why is the Master involved in this? Why was Stephen Fry brought in only to be killed off after about three minutes?
Actually, let’s touch back on this one, why bring in Stephen Fry for so short a time? Rumor has it he was offered the role of the Doctor during the classic series, and it’s known he wrote a script for the revived series in season two that never got made, so after years of almost getting one of the greatest comic actors of all time on the show we finally get him for an extremely minor role that’s over too quickly.
So pretty much the only saving grace in this snoozer of an episode was Sacha Dhawan’s brilliant performance. The rest was a snoozer of an opener to this season and I can only hope that part two picks up the pace and delivers something a lot more interesting than part one.
Oh, and like all good Who villains need to be resurrected, welcome to the resurrection of (the slightly redesigned) Horror of Fan Blog! I tried to retire it last season in favor of posting on the Mile High Who website. But I got sidetracked, and now the MHW website is no more. So this season my reviews will appear in the blog and as notes in the Mile High Who Facebook group. Let’s get ready for what, I hope, will be a better season than that episode suggests.
Senioritis: A condition peculiar to high school seniors, hence the subword "senior" in senoritis. Symptons include a general apathy towards classes, homework, future i.e. college applications, restlessness and a "cannot do" attitude to surmountable school load. - Urban Dictionary
Despite all the hullabulloo about "Twice Upon a Time" being Peter Capaldi's last episode, we're forgetting another goodbye here. It's also Steven Moffat's last episode writing for Doctor Who. Moffat always kept an open invitation extended to Russell T. Davies to come back and write a one-off episode, but Davies never took him up on it. All signs point to Chibnall holding out the same invitation to Moffat, but Moffat has indicated he doesn't intend to take advantage of the invitation either. After six seasons as showrunner, 47 episodes, four minisodes, and one licensed parody, Steven Moffat is finally done (so he says) with the Doctor Who franchise. (Of course, Rule 1.) And for the conclusion off all that work, the greatest writer Doctor Who has ever known (fuck the haters) caps off his run on the show with possibly his biggest limp dick of an episode.
"Twice Upon a Time" can't really be called a "story" in the traditional sense. The elements of a story are considered to be character, setting, plot, conflict, and resolution . "Twice Upon a Time" lacks conflict. Hell, I'd argue it barely has a plot. The episode even goes so far as to point out its own biggest flaw when the Doctor shouts out "It's not an evil plan!" More or less, the Doctor happens upon a perfectly innocent science project, mistakes it for something evil, realizes it isn't, and moves along on his way. That's distinctly not a story.
But the episode is an excuse to have some interesting conversations between the 12th Doctor, the 1st Doctor, Mark Gatiss for some reason, and Bill. Here's the thing, I hate William Hartnell's 1st Doctor. He played the character as a pompous ass, and Hartnell couldn't remember his lines to save his life, which was especially difficult when they couldn't afford to reshoot anything. Steven Moffat has talked about how, looking at David Bradley's version of the 1st Doctor is like looking through a time machine and seeing William Hartnell's Doctor in the flesh.
The fuck is he talking about?
Bradley's voice is distinctly deeper than Hartnell's, for starters. His face looks nothing like Hartnell's, as the 12th Doctor comments on. He doesn't act like the 1st Doctor at all. While the 1st Doctor had a general air of superiority about him, that was always directed towards men and women equally. He never showed himself to be the rampant misogynist that he appears to be in the "Twice Upon a Time." Either Moffat hasn't watched the black and white episodes in a minute, or else he wanted to show everyone who accused him of sexism what sexism actually looks like. Also, bragging about sexual exploits? No Doctor does that. The first Doctor had presumably one partner that we've never met, since he has a granddaughter, and he had a brief romance with an Aztec woman that probably amounted to nothing. Either way, he's never been one to kiss and tell. Remember that just because the 1st Doctor lived in the 1960s and his era aired in the 60's doesn't mean that he's a man from the 60's. Any regeneration, and the Doctor is still an alien who has travelled all of time and space and is millennia ahead of simple human prejudices.
There are only a few things that "Twice Upon a Time" gets right about the 1st Doctor. One is that he always holds his damn lapels whatever he's doing. The other is that the 1st Doctor is not truly a hero. He's surprised by the notion of the 12th Doctor declaring the Earth to be "protected," because the 1st Doctor didn't see himself as a protector of the Earth. He was just an explorer bumbling about, much like 12's speech at the end of "Death in Heaven." I did love the 1st Doctor's explanation of what he was running to, though, that he was trying to realize why good so often triumphs when everything suggests that it shouldn't. He went out in search of the source of that balance in the Universe, and accidentally became the balance he was looking for.
If I let go of my lapels, my neck will fall off.
I loved the line "To be fair, they cut out all the jokes" and it is my nw go-to response for everything now:
Why are the DCEU movies so boring?
Why wasn’t Two and a Half Men ever funny?
Why was Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s press conference so weird?
Why didn’t Kevin Spacey’s apology speech go over better?
Honestly, some of the banter between the two Doctors was amusing, but the fact that the 1st Doctor wasn't the 1st Doctor spoiled it for me. Although I did like that 12 could steer 1's TARDIS which confirms something I've always suspected: The 1st Doctor's TARDIS didn't have a broken navigation system, the 1st Doctor just never had any fucking clue how to steer the damned thing.
While Rusty the Good Dalek is a great name for a Saturday morning cartoon show (RIP), I don't understand why Rusty is so intent on killing the Doctor. They seemed to part on good terms, they have similar goals, what do they have to hate each other over? It seemed like Moffat didn't go back and watch his own episode before writing this one.
I did like the moment of the Christmas Armistice, which is a fascinating point in history, and I don't know how I didn't see that one coming. That being said, it annoyed me that that was the only part of the episode that had anything to do with Christmas! Moffat once said he hated Christmas specials that didn't actually have anything to do with Christmas. Well, he's written two back to back (this and "Mysterio") that only feature one scene on Christmas. I was sad to see his last one lacked any real Christmas to it.
Christmas bells, those Christmas bells, ringing through the land...
The Doctor's regeneration scene, however, was better than the rest of the episode combined. The goodbyes from Bill and Nardole felt hollow since we knew they weren't really them. Admittedly the same could be said of Clara's goodbye, but I think the main point of that moment was to give the Doctor back his memories of her, not for her to say a real goodbye to her. The speech he gives his future self is some of Peter Capaldi's finest work, and a reminder of why he will always be one of the finest actors to ever play the role.
Speaking of actors, hello Jodie Whittaker, who I'm so excited to see taking on this role. The Girl Who Was Hated. I honestly expected they wold make a joke about her noticing she's not ginger before she realized she was a woman now. The revived series has this annoying pattern where, every time the Doctor is about to regenerate, he punches in coordinates and starts the engines right when he is about to regenerate. Think about it, it's happened every time: War to 9, 9 to 10, 10 to 11, 11 to 12, and now in this episode we can not only say the same about 12 to 13, but also about 1 to 2. Smartest man in the universe and he can't figure out that it's a bad idea to start up the most powerful vessel in the universe right before he's about to come down with massive amnesia and confusion. "I'm about to go blind, now's a good time to go for a drive." This time it ended more disastrously than ever before, as the 13th Doctor pressed one button, catapulted herself out the door, at which time the TARDIS dematerialized, leaving her both plummeting towards the ground and stranded without her TARDIS. (The first person I hear make a joke about women drivers, I will detach something valuable from you.) . She'll probably survive the fall because she's technically still regenerating and therefore can heal her injuries, but I'm really excited to see Series 11 start off with a Doctor in a new gender, confused, lost, stranded, with no companions. It's likely to be her most desperate situation upon starting a new regeneration, and I can't wait to see it. Sadly, rumor has it we won't see the next series until September or so. I can't wait.
While we're waiting, I might post in here once or twice. I have been watching all of Jodie Whittaker's other roles and intend to make a post about that at some point. Maybe I'll make another post or two in the meantime. So, until then, fuck you, get pumped, the Doctor is a woman and this is gonna rock!
Look, she's already put together a better workshop than Peter Cushing ever had
Okay, listen motherfuckers, it's been a long time since I've done a blog post about something other than an episode, but the fandom is officially in crisis. The news of the 13th Doctor has come out, and I couldn't be more ecstatic, and I'm ready to learn as much about her as I did about Peter Capaldi shortly after his announcement as Doctor. It's such big, earth shattering news that people who do not watch or particularly care about (or for) Doctor Who are weighing in. And what are they seeing when they look at our fandom? Utter, blatant, vile misogyny, from period jokes, to jokes about women drivers, to the Sun putting out a disgustingly sexist editorial about how bad the decision was to pick a female Doctor, immediately followed be a collection of nude pictures of Jodie Whittaker from her movies. I thought that was the kind of flagrant sexism that anybody would recognize, but when I posted about this on Facebook, and made the mistake of making it a public post, I got this advice on how I should properly react as a real feminist:
"A smart feminist here says 'so what, she's lovely and talented, now can we discuss something important'. I recommend you try that"
I don't know what's harder: holding back the urge to vomit or holding back the urge to correct his grammar. Apparently, according to this guy, the pictures are okay because they were taken with consent in the first place, and there's no way that consensually taken photographs can be recontextualized in a way that humiliates and degrades the person in those photographs. Men who are not seeing this right now because you're men, this is the level of misogyny we're dealing with here.
Here's some examples of fucked up things author Aaron Gillies saw people writing on the Daily Mail website about just the (then, seemingly remote) possibility of a female Doctor shortly before the announcement:
I'm sure their mothers would be so proud of them. You see, this announcement has brought out the worst MRA bullshit you could possibly imagine. This is Ghostbusters to the 100th power. This is still not about ethics in video game journalism. And when it isn't vile sexism, it's just garden variety sexism like claiming the Doctor is a father figure and that means he can never change because only men are fathers, which is a wonderful way of saying "I don't love my mother" and "I have inappropriate thoughts about my father." And is it true that I was once on the other side of this debate? Yes. But, I also once held the belief that I could only ever be male as well, and I have done a complete 180 on that as well.
Now the people on the anti-woman side are complaining that those of us in favor of the casting choice are being just as venomous as the anti crowd. Here's the thing, a) no we're not and b) long hair, don't care. I spent all day Sunday, and a good part of my time since, mocking the haters who are running around saying the sky is falling. I'm not apologizing for one second of it because, you see, it's not like this is an argument between two rational point of view. This is an argument between one side with a rational point of view, and the other side whose whole argument boils down to "Girls are icky!" And yes, I'm including all the self-hating women and my former self in the girls are icky crowd.
The anti-female Doctor crowd are mostly represented by people whose responses would put Milo Yinnapoulos to shame. And as a trans woman, I resent the implication that a man changing into a woman is the worst thing in the world. So I'm not sorry if my celebration of the Doctor somehow hurts your feelings. It shouldn't; get over it. I'm not sorry that you think that I'm gloating. I'm not sorry that I literally spent all day on Saturday mocking the haters. We don't live in a PC culture where all the liberals want to be coddled, we live in a sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic culture where those who are spewing the hate expect to be coddled with the mantra of "Everyone is entitled to their opinion." Yes, and I'm entitled to express my opinion that you should be ashamed of your opinion.
The future is all girl. The Doctor is a woman. Get over it. I'm done.
If you met yourself, as a different gender, would you not spend all your time fucking?
I know I'm in the minority in saying this but, despite thinking this was a good season (albeit not as good as Capaldi's other two seasons), I thought the two part finale was just so-so. I mean, it's got some great moments, and the first two-Master episode is a certainly a prospect that I was excited to see, but "The Doctor Falls" set up a lot of expectations that it didn't deliver on. The two Masters together were woefully underused, and I think there could have been a lot more fun interactions with those two. Also, I expected this episode to explain the Master's motivation for turning Bill into a Cyberman, and the answer in the end seems to just be "to be a dick." Frankly, I would rank this as the weakest Moffat finale, as even Moffat's disastrously weak 7th Season still ended strongly (even though I said it didn't at the time).
They keep calling this the origin of the Cybermen, which makes little sense because it's been well established that Mondasian Cybermen come from...well, Mondas, not a Mondasian colony ship. Even if this isn't explicitly stated in their debut episode, "The Tenth Planet," it is in what is generally considered the best of the Doctor Who audio stories (which, remember, are canon) Spare Parts, in which the 5th Doctor visits Mondas just before the creation of the Cybermen to see their real origin. Moffat tries to fix this in the dialogue by saying that the Cybermen start a lot of places, here, Mondas, Telos, Earth. Okay, not only does that not explain the fact that these Mondasian Cybermen are identical to the ones in "The Tenth Planet." Also, the Cybermen never started on Telos. Telos is the planet that the Mondasian Cybermen moved to, displacing (or killing, I don't remember) the residents because their home planet of Mondas had been destroyed by their own stupidity.
And what does the Doctor accomplish with this episode, anyway? He manages to leave Nardole behind to continue to help protect the people from the Cybermen for eternity. Good luck with that Nardole, you useless lump. But there's really no climactic scene in this episode. There's a big, muddled scene of the Doctor battling the Cybermen (and the sonic screwdriver is used as a weapon, which is breaking a rule of Doctor Who) and the Doctor is basically killed and then he spits out a 1st Doctor quote that's based on a 4th Doctor quote, but nothing really feels like a climactic moment of the episode, and I think that's what I disliked about this episode the most.
I also didn't feel satisfied with the interactions between The Master and Missy interactions. In "Day of the Doctor," I felt like Moffat hit all the right notes of everything I wanted 10 and 11 to say to each other. I didn't get that from the Master and Missy. I did love the Doctor's speech to them to stand with him, and that, at the end, Missy tries to but the two Masters kill each other. But I didn't get why the Master was so opposed to standing with the Doctor. The last we saw the Saxon Master, he was standing with the Doctor against Rassilon. And then he got sucked into the time lock and cured of being Skeletor (which seems unlikely, but okay) and this is him after the events of "The End of Time." So why has his tune changed so much? Missy's right in "The Magician's Apprentice," the Doctor and the Master have always been as much friends as enemies, and the Saxon Master is no exception. There were plenty of moments where he and the 10th Doctor had a mutual respect and admiration for each other. Where'd all that go?
I thought it was a shame that the Doctor never explained the concept of regeneration to Bill (even though he demonstrated it to her) so she just leaves him not knowing she could stick around and wait for him to regenerate. Although, she does repeat the Doctor's line about it being a big universe and hoping she'll run into him again. And I've been having the same argument about this episode that I had about "Time of the Doctor": Heather showing up is not a deus ex machina. Something that was set up previously cannot, by definition, be a deus ex machina. It's just another one of Moffat's methods for killing off a character but not really killing them off (but really killing them off).
The Doctor then wakes up and starts babbling phrases from other Doctors before him, and people are already complaining about this Doctor not wanting to regenerate and it being like 10's big whiny speech about not wanting to go at the end of "The End of Time." But that's not a fair comparison. My problem with 10's speech was that a man was about to die if the Doctor didn't spend a regeneration. That's not happening this time. Very. Big. Difference.
Me every morning before work.
And then the 12th Doctor runs into the 1st Doctor (played by a new actor, of course, because Billy Hearts is long dead) and the 1st Doctor repeats the same 1st Doctor line that the 12th Doctor said earlier. Moffat couldn't leave us without lying one more time, because he said like 6 months ago that there would be no more multi-Doctor episodes, and he's clearly just set us up for a 12th Doctor/1st Doctor Christmas Special. It looks like a lot of fun. But I have to say, what right does the 1st Doctor have to be criticizing the 12th Doctor about not wanting to regenerate. He's the 1st Doctor. He hasn't regenerated yet. As old as he may look, he's a child compared to 12. He should shut the hell up.
Well, that's it. My last blog entry for Moffat's final season. I put together Julie's Punk Rock Doctor Who Playlist Season 10 of songs that represent season 10 for me, partially based on my blog titles, partially based on what I would have titled the blogs I skipped, and a little editing to make sure no band gets used twice. I can't throw up a link to it like last season because I'm on Apple Music, not Spotify, now and I don't know how to do that, so I'll just write it out. Feel free to put it together on your device and play along with me:
1. The Pilot - Drown With the Monster by White Lung
2. Smile - Smile Smile Smile by The Dollyrots
3. Thin Ice - The Unseen Tears of the Albacore by The Vandals
4. Knock Knock - Safe European Homes by The Clash
5. Oxygen - For Your Lungs Only by Alkaline Trio
6. Extremis - Bad Catholics by The Menzingers
7. The Pyramid at the End of the World - Pyramid Scheme by Mad Caddies
8. Lie of the Land - Die for Your Government by Anti-Flag
9. The Empress of Mars - God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols
10. Eaters of Light - All My Best Friends Are Metalheads by Less Than Jake
11. World Enough and Time - Hospital for Heroes by Direct Hit!
12. The Doctor Falls - Original Me by ALL
That's it until Christmas, where I'm going to be really sad because we're not just saying goodbye to a great Doctor, we're saying goodbye to the best showrunner Doctor Who has ever had. Fuck the haters. Until next time:
Nice job bringing back the original design, Moffat, but somebody forgot about the crotch flashlights
I've missed a whole chunk of the season on this blog, including what I call The Pyramid Trilogy, one of the weakest Moffat episodes in a while, a mediocre Gatiss episode, and the first episode of the new series to be written by a classic series writer, "The Eaters of Light." Overall, the season has been pretty good. Not as good as the other two seasons of the Capaldi era, but both of those seasons were just extraordinary. Oh, and I guessed a major plot point. I guessed, not only that Missy was in the vault, but that she was in there because the Doctor promised he would guard her if she was spared from execution. The only thing I guessed wrong was that I guessed it was the Time Lords trying to execute her, but other than that I think I was pretty dead on with that. Now, onto this week's episode.
I feel like I'm the only one with mixed feelings about this episode. Not saying it wasn't better than an everyday old throw away like "The Eaters of Light," it was definitely a good episode, but I didn't get the thrill out of it that I thought I could have. I largely blame this on the BBC announcing the episode's big surprises months ago. Sure, if they hadn't said that the original Tenth Planet Cybermen were coming back, I would have guessed it halfway through. It was hard to miss that design. But they not only announced, before the season started, that John Simm would be returning as the Master, they made sure to tell us that it would be in this damn episode. So I'm a little surprised to find that some people didn't see what was coming when John Simm removed his disguise. That was a bit obvious to me. I'm like "Well, I'm looking for John Simm to show up in this episode, this guy is vaguely the same height and weight as John Simm, sounds kind of like John Simm, and the Master did love disguises like this in the classic series. That's probably John Simm in a bunch of makeup." Sure enough, it came out that Brian Minchin wanted a twist pulled straight out of the classic series, and John Simm pulled off the dupe as well as Anthony Ainley ever did. But Ainley used to have his name taken out of the credits sometimes to avoid spoiling the surprise. The BBC made it blatantly obvious that this guy was John Simm, and if they hadn't made announcements about him, I never, ever would have guessed what was happening.
If you notice, in one scene where the Saxon Master is still in disguise, the music in the background is the same used in some of John Simm's other scenes as the Master during the 10th Doctor era.
I'm so glad that when they brought back the Tenth Planet Cybermen, they kept their bizarre speech patterns, because that's what I loved most about those Cybermen. It's creepier than any Cybermen that have come since. It also underscores the creepiness of Bill's death in the final scene as a twisted robotic voice informs the Doctor of who she is. I think Bill is pretty clearly dead at this point, as there's never been anyone in any episode, or even any expanded universe materials, who has become a fully converted Cyberman and was brought back to human. But of course, Moffat likes to kill off characters, but then give them some sort of weird, extended life like River being saved in the library and Clara having a TARDIS and some adventures with Me before she actually returns to her moment of death, and I imagine Bill will get something like that. Perhaps that's where Heather, the girl from "The Pilot," will come back in "The Doctor Falls," as everything in "The Pilot" pointed to the Cybermen being involved, and pointed towards her coming back, and we're running out of time for her to come back.
Some people I've been talking to have been saying that the Doctor has little connection to Bill and doesn't really care about her, and that he might have sacrificed her in a larger scheme to save Missy's soul. I find this theory extremely suspect because I think we've seen plenty of signs this season that the Doctor cares about Bill. I think he's going to be really torn up about Bill, seeing as how he lost Clara and River Song. Moffat is getting pretty kill happy in that he's killed off two companions in a row, whereas there had only been one long-term companion before the Moffat era to die while traveling with the Doctor. The 12th Doctor is officially the worst babysitter of any of the Doctors.
Why the hell is the Doctor regenerating at the beginning of the episode? Obviously it takes pace at some point in the future. The Doctor's hair is a lot longer than it is in the rest of the episode, suggesting it's very far off in the future for him. But is this from the end of "The Doctor Falls"? I think "World Enough and Time," "The Doctor Falls," and the Christmas special are all going to be a three part episode, and either that regeneration scene from the beginning of "World Enough and Time" won't actually come to pass until the end of the Christmas special, or else he's going to somehow begin regeneration in "The Doctor Falls," but not fully complete his regeneration until the end of the Christmas special, which has already been confirmed to be Capaldi's last episode. That or it's all a fake out; this is the second time we've seen him "regenerate" this season, after all.
There's this one scene in the trailer from next week with the Doctor, the Master, and Missy all standing together on a clifftop pointing their screwdrivers (or in Missy's case, an umbrella) at the same target, which gives me hope that maybe the Doctor brings out the good in both of them, not just Missy. It occurred to me that Moffat writes Missy more like an antihero than a true villain, and I wonder if this finale is actually going to end with Missy's redemption and transformation into full-on good guy...who's still an antihero. Someone will inevitably reboot it in the past, because the Master is too good a villain to waste on redemption, but it would still be a great ending for the time being.
Well, we'll see today as we brace for Moffat's final season finale as showrunner. I think this one could be a real doozy. Until then:
Okay, I have a few apologies to make. First of all, I promised myself I wouldn't use two song titles from the same band in the same season, because I think of it like a playlist. But Alkaline Trio's "For Your Lungs Only" is too perfect of a title for this episode. The second apology is that I'm monumentally late with this blog. Another episode has already aired since this episode aired, and another one airs today. I was moving into a new apartment and my life became chaotic for a few weeks there and I didn't have time to blog. Believe me, it was not out of disinterest in the episode, "Oxygen," because honestly, "Oxygen" may be my new favorite episode of the Capaldi era.
We haven't had an episode as dark as "Oxygen" since at least "Dark Water," if not longer. Actually, the only episode I can think of that's as grizzly, dark, and horrific as "Oxygen" isn't even a new series episode. We have to go all the way back to the 6th Doctor serial, "Vengence on Varos." "Vengence on Varos," a disturbing dystopian nightmare about a reality where people are tortured on live television and politicians put their proposals up to a reality show style vote and if they lose the vote, they could be killed. "Vengence on Varos" was so violent that it became the first time fans of the show started to agree with parents' groups that called the show inappropriate for children. The show survived a few years after "Varos," but I believe that the slow death it suffered began with viewer outrage over "Vengence on Varos." Now, Jamie Mathieson, Steven Moffat's only true peer on the Doctor Who writing staff right now, gives us an episode that leaves the viewer deeply disturbed, and with a haunting political message to go with it.
Can you imagine if an American television show had an episode where a character said "And that was it for Capitalism"? Yes, Star Trek basically lives in a socialist utopia and does talk about how unfair conditions for the poor put an end to Capitalism, but they go out of their way to avoid using words like "Capitalism" and "Socialism" and somehow people fail to notice that that's what happened in the Star Trek universe. Jamie Mathieson's script said the word "Capitalism" multiple times. And before you go thinking that it's absolute absurdity for a company to sell us the air we breathe, is it really any different than charging for food, water, shelter, and clothing? This is why I work in the non-profit sector.
And how about "Oxygen"'s cold open? Have we ever cut to the opening credits on a darker, more violent note? A woman trying to tell her husband she wants to have a baby is attacked and murdered and turned into a zombie that, along with other zombies, tries to kill her husband. Jesus Christ, you couldn't just make her eight months pregnant to really make it horrifying. I like when I get scared by an episode's setup because I know it's just going to make me even happier when the Doctor stops the bad guys. This time, the real bad guys were a big corporation off screen, but those are the bad guys in real life so it was still satisfying.
The fluid link hasn't been mentioned on the show since the Second Doctor era, but in every mention of in in canon, it has always been essential to the function of the TARDIS. The 1st Doctor met the daleks when he lied to his companions that fluid link K7 (as opposed to fluid link K57 that Nardole steals, because the naming conventions on these things are completely random) had run out of mercury and needed to be refilled as a ruse to get them to go out and explore the planet of Skaro. It's hard to believe, because of the history of fluid links, that they aren't all essential to the function of the TARDIS. It's more likely that, when the Doctor says that he lied about the link being essential to the TARDIS taking off, I'd guess that what he really means is that he lied about the thing Nardole took out being a fluid link.
Speaking of Nardole, I still hate him, but thankfully so do the writers and the Doctor himself. Nardole's entire function in the show seems to be to be a stick in the mud and to try to stop the plot of the show from happening. "Oxygen" has more of Nardole than any episode so far in the regular season, and I still love it in spite of that. When Nardole isn't trying to ruin everything, he's giving explanations that the Doctor could have easily given if he wasn't in the episode, or making really weird jokes about an ex-girlfriend that don't really pay off.
The only thing I didn't like about this episode was the hyperbolic, overacted, soap-opera-style overdramatic way that the Doctor announces he's still blind at the end of the episode. I don't know who directed the great Peter Capaldi into that terrible performance, but they need to be fined for that stupidity. I'm sure the blindness is a setup for something big in the overall plot, but I can't for the life of me guess what it's going to be. It's interesting that it happened because of how long the Doctor was exposed to the void of space, because a Fifth Doctor episode that I can't remember the name of right now established that the Doctor can survive in the void of space longer than humans can. But perhaps that's why that other character said that he should have died; it's almost as if he isn't human.
But the blindness will be discussed in the next overdue blog. So until then...
"Now that we have a black person, we're officially a Benetton ad!"
Once upon a time, in the Russel T. Davies era, Season 4, there was a plan for a Cops-style episode, where the Doctor goes on a reality show like Cops and solves a mystery while Donna watches the episode from home. Davies, however, scrapped the episode because he felt like it was too similar in tone to "The Unicorn and the Wasp," even though the two episodes would have taken place approximately 82 years apart. Instead, he quickly wrote "Midnight," his best episode, and put that in its place. I tell you this story because I don't understand how Davies could see the similar tones in what sound like very dissimilar stories, and Steven Moffat (admittedly, one of my heroes) couldn't see that within three weeks he had two episodes with similar monsters with the exact same way of killing people. In "Knock Knock," the monsters are tiny creatures that make up the very structure but can come loose to form a swarm that eats people. Where have I heard of that before?
The two robots represent the old man
This was a pretty mediocre episode, with a lot of plot holes. Why does he need to let the bugs eat people in order for them to keep his mother alive? Those seem like pretty unrelated things. As Shelley pointed out, why does the mother only restore this particular group of young people and not the hundreds of others that he's done this to? Why do the bugs kill everyone else but for the mother they keep her alive? Why did everyone accept the Doctor as Bill's grandfather without asking the inevitable racist question, which is easily answered by anyone with half a brain, but still would inevitably be asked in that situation?
This was an interesting to see, though, in the week before I move in with some new roommates. Oh, and it was the week before Mother's Day. Ew.
Is it my imagination or, when Bill claims to be the Doctor's granddaughter, it's on a day where her clothes and hair look rather Susan-ish? They've been trying to remind us a lot of Susan this year. Could they finally be hinting at some sort of return?
After this episode, I'm more certain than ever that the Master is in that vault, and it's probably Missy. I mean, could that have been a more obvious hint? It's someone whose company the Doctor enjoys who delights in the suffering of others. That's Missy. I know that John Simm is coming back to play the Saxon Master at some point this season, but I can't imagine Simm's Master playfully communicating with the Doctor through piano music. I'm thinking that Simm is just back to film a flashback scene where we see his Master regenerate into Missy. I don't want to see him steal Missy's spotlight. He was a great Master, but his Master was very much designed to play against David Tennant's Doctor, and Missy was just made for Peter Capaldi's 12th Doctor.
That's going to have to be it for now. I've got packing to do for my move this weekend. Next week we have an episode from Jamie Mathieson, so that looks promising. Until next time:
Sorry I'm late this week. I'm packing to move next Saturday (13th) and I was a little behind on my reviews over at Punknews. (Go check out my reviews of Conor Oberst, Kendrick Lamar, and Cayetana from this week, because I'm weirdly eclectic.) Also, there's this show on Netflix called Girlboss that I'm already on my fourth time through watching, so I've had things to do. So I'll probably get this out after the new episode airs in England, but before it airs in the US. So here we go!
I liked this episode a lot, even though others thought it was was a knock off of "The Beast Below." I admit that there are similarities. Most notably that you could just as easily call this episode "The Beast Below" is the name wasn't already taken. Of course, the beast in "The Beast Below" didn't eat the children. But the biggest similarity between "Thin Ice" and "The Beast Below" is that the monster is almost a B-story to the more important story of the Doctor bonding with his new companion. Bill had to deal head on with the darker realities of traveling with the Doctor. It's something everyone eventually realizes about the Doctor. But as Bill is likely to be a one-season-and-done companion, she needs to learn it faster than the others.
I'm glad they addressed the fact of Bill's race. They did it a little bit with Martha's first trip into the past with "The Shakespeare Code," but the 10th Doctor seemed oblivious to her concerns. The notoriously oblivious 12th Doctor understood it a lot better. I know some people who found it too preachy, but I loved the moment when Bill pointed out there were more black people there than in the history books, and the Doctor said "History, it's a whitewash." My hope is that when they finally hire the first black Doctor they address these sorts of things. I'm really hoping that happens next season and that despite the rumors it's not this guy:
I'm bringing fugly back.
But this guy:
Have you tried turning the Dalek off and on again?
Last week, I had a theory after I published the blog that what was in the vault was Gallifrey, since the creatures trying to destroy it in "Time of the Doctor" presumably don't know it's back yet and that confrontation is yet to happen. But "Thin Ice" seemed to imply from the interaction with Nardole (who was thankfully in this episode very little, and only to be the big fuddy-duddy) and whatever's in the vault, that there's a single creature in that vault. My new theory is that one of the versions of the Master we're promised to see this year, was sentenced to death by the Time Lords and the Doctor negotiated with them to put him/her under his custody.
Next week's episode (which isn't really next week because it's airing in the UK as I type this) is by a brand new writer, so who knows what it'll be like. So until next time:
It's basically an early predecessor to the sonic screwdriver, yet the Doctor always looks at a smart phone with such contempt.
I made myself a rule last year that I was going to make the rest of my overanalyses in Peter Capaldi's tenure from that point on were going to be named after punk songs, in honor of the 12th Doctor's guitar playing and Peter Capaldi's actual punk band he had with Craig Ferguson. (Except I already know what I'm going to call the overanalysis of this year's Christman special, and it's alternative, not punk, but I have to use it because it's so perfect.) Hey, guess what? Do you know how many punk songs have the word "smile" or "happy" in the title? Very, very few.
But this episode was goddamn amazing, especially considering it comes from the writer of "In the Forest of the Night"! This is good, old fashioned sci-fi. Machines coming after humans, entirely because of a lack of understanding of human emotions. This is like something pulled out of I, Robot, only with more action. There's an old classic series serial called "The Happiness Patrol" about a society that policed happiness and punished sadness severely, and I was worried that this episode would turn out too much like that. But, where "The Happiness Patrol" is about the political suppression of negative emotions, "Smile" was about robots making a mistake that lead to them suppress negative emotion, so it didn't actually feel anything at all like "The Happiness Patrol."
It also didn't have The Candy Man, which is simultaneously the most goofy and most fucked up villain the classic series ever created.
I missed a lot of hints and clues and build ups for the bigger story arc of the season last week and I'm kicking myself for it. For one thing, I completely ignored all of the Doctor's talk about an oath he swore. Why did I skip all that? Because honestly, he said it with so much conviction I actually thought it was something I was supposed to already know about. Me, the girl that writes a literal "overanalysis" blog, thought she missed a big oath the Doctor swore at some point. Yeah, that sounds like me. So, now, we do have an ongoing question of the season: "Why did he make this oath, and what the fuck is in that vault?"
I loved that Nardole was barely in this episode. Let's keep it that way.
I love in this episode where the colonists figure out that The Vardy killed their families, so they start grabbing guns. You're inside an enormous building made out of them, what's a half dozen laser guns going to do?
How long until Think Geek starts selling Bill's rainbow top?
I loved the Doctor pointing out that there was an evacuation of Earth, and that he's run into a few of their ships over the years. Besides running into one in "The Beast Below," there's also the classic series episode "The Arc in Space," and probably several others I can't think of right now. But if he even points out that there were multiple ships, that he's been to a few before, why does he literally say that The Vardy are threatening to kill what's left of the human race? You've already explained in episode why that's not true, Doctor. Pay attention!
This week, I got a Facebook message from some of the members of my old podcast, The Mile High Who Podcast. It's been on indefinite haitus for a while, and that will probably be a permanent haitus now that Shelley, the founder of our whole group and the originator of the podcast, moved back home to Kansas City. But as soon as we finally got a new episode last week, Shelly wished we could still podcast. So she messaged us all to talk about the new episode, and she pointed out to me something that I missed:
Okay, so my disagreement with Shelley over terminology here is that I, and I think a lot of other people too, use "Mondasian Cybermen" to differentiate from Russel T. Davies's idiotic invention, the "Cybus Cybermen," or "Pete's World Cybermen." It's been implied that "Nightmare in Silver" was a return to (what I call) Mondasian Cybermen instead of Cybus Cybermen, primarily because the former are the only ones ever shown to have a weakness to gold. But other people, like Shelley, and apparently all the press that's come out about this season, us "Mondasian Cybermen" to refer only to Cybermen from the era before Mondas was destroyed. That encompasses only one serial of the classic series, The First Doctor's final serial, "The Tenth Planet," and one Big Finish Audio story called "Spare Parts." My argument is that they're still Mondasian when they're homeless, and they're still Mondasian when they forcibly take over the planet Telos and make that their new home, in the same way that I'm Irish even though I don't live in Ireland. So a lot of reports have come out lately about "The Mondasian Cybermen," but I'm going to refer to those, in this blog, "Tenth Planet Cybermen."
Yes, the reports have confirmed that the Tenth Planet Cybermen are coming back this season, and boy am I excited to see them. And with the clue that Shelley showed me, it implies that they're going to be the main villain of the season. The original, Tenth Planet Cybermen had a much campier design than the sleeker, modern Cybermen, and they were much easier to defeat, but there was something really retro cool about their look. I also really loved their bizarre speech patterns, but if the voices coming from the puddle in "The Pilot" were any indication, they won't have those speech patterns.
But what are they up to? The Mondasian Cybermen come from Mondas, which is a twin planet to Earth that drifted away from the sun and needed to augment their people to continue to survive. But when that proved to not be enough anymore, they came to Earth for...some reason. Invasion? Spare parts? I don't rewatch First Doctor serials very often. But it resulted in Mondas being destroyed. This is why I prefer Mondasian Cybermen, because they actually have a very sympathetic back story. Everything they did, they did to try to survive. They were just willing to kill innocents to do that, something the Doctor will never abide. If they've jumped forward 11 Doctors to come for the Doctor's 12th incarnation, I'm guessing their goals are back to what they were in their first few appearances after "The Tenth Planet": changing the timeline to bring back Mondas. But why did they need a pilot who was made of water and not metal? She's definitely coming back.
The ending, where the Doctor landed in the wrong place and time and that leads us into the next episode, is a very Classic Series style ending. The first two Doctors didn't have the ability to steer the TARDIS, and once the third Doctor figured out how to do it, he and his successive regenerations were still not great at it, and the accidental landings often set up for the next episode. Next week's episode is written by Sarah Dollard, who gave us the beautiful first part of last season's three-part finale, "Face the Raven," so I trust it will be pretty good. Until next time!
